World of Warcraft Classic Beta Added to CDN

Originally Posted by Deventh

Cmon guys. Release date has to be imminent.

End of June early july for 8.2, puts classic at probably late Aug early Sep. to make the "summer" deadline easy.

They're not going to overlap the two, that wouldn't spread out extra subs.

I can't wait for the moment people realize that Classic servers won't give them the sense of magic and fulfillment they got on release.

Originally Posted by NoiseTank13

I can't wait for the moment people realize that Classic servers won't give them the sense of magic and fulfillment they got on release.

This. You can't go back. Classic servers will be ghost towns in 4 months.

Originally Posted by NoiseTank13

I can't wait for the moment people realize that Classic servers won't give them the sense of magic and fulfillment they got on release.

Can't wait for the moment BfA trolls realize people have different taste in games, and Classic servers are as popular as BfA servers.

- - - Updated - - -

Originally Posted by Cavox

This. You can't go back. Classic servers will be ghost towns in 4 months.

Blizzard disagrees with you:

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2...-big-questions

Are you expecting players to come back to vanilla WOW and properly invest in that game, or just have a look around for nostalgia's sake?

J. Allen Brack: Both, I think. One of the things we do know is that by announcing this, we're in the WOW Classic business forever. Once that starts, there's a commitment on our end that we're going to continue maintaining those servers for as long as there is a World of Warcraft. I think there will be people that come and do the nostalgia trip, they go to the Barrens and find Mankrik's wife, and then they're done. That's fine. Some amount of people, however, are going to create a new Classic community and that's what we'll be providing.

Those people don't just want the old gameplay features, they want the constant social connection. And so we can't just support it for a couple of months and then if it's not working out, ditch it. There has to be an assurance that you can build this character, build this guild, build these friendships, and the server will continue.

can't wait!

probably won't play it for a long time, but that's fine.

Been there, done that. Ppl i know started playing wow when they were 16-19, they are now 30+, who got 9h per day to play a game these days Oo? Retail > Classic always

Hey ATVI apologists, go away to your QoL wonderland of BFA, and let me enjoy a proper MMORPG.

Originally Posted by Grimalkin of Old

Hey ATVI apologists, go away to your QoL wonderland of BFA, and let me enjoy a proper MMORPG.

We will.

Ah, and please, don’t log back to retail, ever, so that Blizzard can continue development without having to care about nerdies with 5 hours a day to play anymore.

Originally Posted by BoltBlaster

You got it backwards. One great thing about Classic is you don't play latest patch, there are no dailies, there is no fake progression at max level, so you can play at your own pace. It is much more casual friendly than retail. Classic proper MMORPG > Retail achievement/collections gathering emulator with few remaining RPG elements.

Exactly, I've been playing on one of those hmm servers the last 4 months and I've enjoyed that a hell of a lot more than the last 6 years of retail. I can't wait for progression to actually mean something, funny how a drop of a green item can make your day, or the creation of an item through your profession (you do know professions right ? Its that thing that has been a mess for years and years!) can make your enjoyment that much better. Bring on Classic I've been waiting for it since it's announcement.

It is happening guys!

Only Blizzard could ever take so long to release a beta of a replica of a product they released years ago.

Originally Posted by Nokonda

Only Blizzard could ever take so long to release a beta of a replica of a product they released years ago.

I can't understand it either. Even IF you needed to adjust the game engine to 2019 standards/systems/drivers/libraries it shouldn't take more than few (2-3) months for a qualified game dev studio. It seems like generating fake hype or delaying as much as they can, because they don't want to divide the playerbase further between retail and classic.

Originally Posted by Cavox

I can't understand it either.

Only software developers will understand. Back then it was a stand alone program running on Windows XP and installed from CD, since then things have moved on... the delivery of content, bug fixes, the way you sign on, the hardware and OS you run it on.

Originally Posted by Cavox

I can't understand it either. Even IF you needed to adjust the game engine to 2019 standards/systems/drivers/libraries it shouldn't take more than few (2-3) months for a qualified game dev studio. It seems like generating fake hype or delaying as much as they can, because they don't want to divide the playerbase further between retail and classic.

Because they're not just rereleasing classic as it was, they're rebuilding classic on the modern engine. They don't have a lot of assets and some stuff they're building entirely off videos and reports from back in the day. And it's not a huge dev team like retail

Originally Posted by schwarzkopf

Only software developers will understand. Back then it was a stand alone program running on Windows XP and installed from CD, since then things have moved on... the delivery of content, bug fixes, the way you sign on, the hardware and OS you run it on.

I'm an IT engineer (not a software developer mind you) and I still say it's delay tactics. They have a 2005/6 build - just make it work on newer OS + bug fixes (which they know how to fix by now). Modders do shit like this all the time, not to mention gog.com. I don't believe they needed 18 months of development time to release classic. You could've make a new game in that time with resources Blizzard has. I understand the team is smaller, but still - they HAVE the build and the assets.

Originally Posted by Onikaroshi

Because they're not just rereleasing classic as it was, they're rebuilding classic on the modern engine. They don't have a lot of assets and some stuff they're building entirely off videos and reports from back in the day. And it's not a huge dev team like retail

You are living in a dream world. They have all the assets, effects and data/scripts. Because otherwise they would not be able to defend their IP if someone starts to use them like copy/paste from the Classic client into a new game...

There are so many simple Jacks out there.

Originally Posted by dhru2

You are living in a dream world. They have all the assets, effects and data/scripts. Because otherwise they would not be able to defend their IP if someone starts to use them like copy/paste from the Classic client into a new game...

There are so many simple Jacks out there.

An yes they're just lying to everyone including investors about it, and you call me a "simple jack"

Originally Posted by BoltBlaster

No, there are too many wannabe armchair developer kids with no real experience.

You don't know how complex their system is, if data can be changed from old format to new format, how many tweaks to modern client need to be done to make it work with old data, what it takes to make new engine emulate old rules. I'm sure it is very complex.

They actually did some presentation a while ago showing how different data is and explaining why it can't be automated. When things can't be automated due to engines being completely incompatible, they require massive amounts of manual labor to test and tweak everything.

Yeah, they showed how poorly a lot of things were done back in the day. We have to remember that vanilla was made by a bunch of amatuers doing their first MMO ever, it was a mess

To all the people that claim it shouldn't take so long blablabla. Look at their 2018 Blizzcon Classic panels, its really complicated.
Also, they have switched from Legion core to BFA core with the latest builds.

Originally Posted by Cavox

I'm an IT engineer (not a software developer mind you) and I still say it's delay tactics. They have a 2005/6 build - just make it work on newer OS + bug fixes (which they know how to fix by now). Modders do shit like this all the time, not to mention gog.com. I don't believe they needed 18 months of development time to release classic. You could've make a new game in that time with resources Blizzard has. I understand the team is smaller, but still - they HAVE the build and the assets.

The biggest challenge is that things like their interfaces between the model engine and the data have changed dramatically during Cataclysm's development. And their release system had to be reorganised so that they weren't delivering a Cata landscape as well as Classic. Simple things like the coordinate system being different such that they had to translate a bunch of stuff, and of course then painstakingly check that every tree was at ground level, and there was water in every pond etc.

Likely a handful of people spent a week in every single zone just comparing the clients, let alone the time to fix all the issues they found. I *am* a software developer, and we still have parts of our codebase that are older than WoW. When it came to moving our product into the Cloud, we gave up trying to convert and are rewriting the entire product. I'd hate to have to do the work they've been gracious enough to do.